Colleges should ban class lectures. They are one of the less efficient way of conveying information and knowledge. The fact that these survived the invention of the printing press amazes me but I am confident it won't survive the internet era.
A popular uprising needs to take strategic points in just a few days. It can't survive much longer. If you need a guerrilla campaign, that can include popular support but it is a completely different thing.
Actually they fared really badly until they got mukets that could pierce a knight's armour. Before that, send a few knights and they could disperse a lot of peasants. Mounted knights were the assault tanks of today. Their expensive and superior equipment is a force multiplier. 18th and 19th revolutions owe more to the cheap manufacture of powerful guns than to a sudden realization that tyranny is unbearable.
Because you cannot bring about Democracy by force. Either the people are ready for it or they are not, and the single best test of "are they ready" is that they overthrow the tyrant
Well I would like to believe in that myth, but I doubt that this is a universal rule and I think the ability to overthrow tyrants depends a lot more on the state of warfare technologies than on the willpower of the people. France, USA, had it easy to revolt at the era of the riffle. At this time, a riffle in a hand was worth another riffle in a hand. Numbers gave victory and thus, military victory was often democratic as well. Nowadays you can exterminate protestors with a few assault tanks. You have to have an organized rebel army if you want to overthrow a dictator's army. A rebel army is often very different from a popular uprising. The only recent success in popular uprising happened in situations where the government was strong but not harsh enough to cause tens of thousands of deaths in its own population.
We have to face it : the era of successful armed popular uprising was a specific time window that is now passed. It is now the role of outside democracies to help people fight their dictators. As "slippery slope" as it is and has proven to be, this is the only way left to overthrow dictators.
According to Henry Ford, the two most valuable assets of a company did not appear at the bottom line : it was a company's reputation and the employees that had the know-how. A loss of reputation can have a very direct impact on the bottom-line. Even a 100% egoistical company should think twice before leaving the popular "neutral-we-love-free-speech" costume.
That is the oracle paradox : there are many cases where you can't make a correct prediction that accounts for your prediction's effects.
That is exactly why in Asimov series there is the second foundation.
The rationale is that computers make illegal copies on CDs and USB sticks so CDs and USB memory sticks must be taxed proportionally to their the space of storage they offer. Of course this is already silly and was created at the time where CDs were the most common movable storage devices. In order for it to not look too silly, it was made so that the tax would not target computers, as a 100 GB HD would make the tax ridiculously high. Then it was extended to devices that could be plugged to computers and provide storages. It sound sensible when applied to MP3 players, like the iPod, as their main use is actually to listen to music. Then came some devices with very high storage space, the design of a computer but the possibility to be seen as a USB storage.
This law was silly to begin with but now that it is a bit too blinding they will change it. Bah, it will have lasted a few years already and netted the music labels several millions.
By using systems they fully control ? They were using windows, which HAS backdoors that are acknowledged by microsoft to install security updates.
People will manage to sell something like "cyber-defense" when all that is needed, really, is to use the good tool for the good job...
It is also worth noticing the very high rate of prisoners per capita that even most dictatorship don't manage to top. I mean there are more prisoner in absolute (not per capita) in US than in China. That is saying a lot.
It is a highly ineffective way to donate. And it only transmits very small sums IMHO. Wikileaks has about 5000 flattrs. Those translate to a few dollars maximum. This is not a viable donation means. I want to give 20 bucks or more to wikileaks. I have no way of doing that using flattr unless I create an account specially for flattr (and accept to give 10% to flattr)
My first thought at seeing the title of the article was "who is really surprised ?" I mean it is not like we have been talking about that for more than a decade...
You have a microphone linked to a radio-emitter with a behavior you can not verify and everybody wears one. If you told that to a citizen of a democracy in 1980, it would tell you it is a potential Orwellian world. I mean people who call that a "surprise" are clearly lacking any sort of insight.
Actually DNS appearing to be the pressure point that censors will use to switch down website, I say it is interesting to be able to memorize a few or to write them down quickly.
I remember someone actually calculating the density of nanobots you would need per cubic meter in the whole atmosphere to fill the IPv6 address space. You can do it, but that day we will have some more serious concerns...
Apparently many people had the same idea. The tetalab (a French fablab) proposes a similar thing to tag all the subjects of the cables :
http://leakspin.tetalab.org/
Do they really rely on that ? I know they check for coherent answers, but the training they give is so poor that I don't expect them to get any meaningful results. How much points ina spike for it to be significant ? Is it normal to see high frequency oscillations ? Should we try to spot spikes even when the data is very noisy ?
Also, the example they give is very obvious. I am sure I could easily write a software to do as well very quickly (find a significant deviation from average that appear locally on several points). I tried a few graphs, before my CS background convinced me that the aim of this website is more to attract attention than to really add scientific content. Seriously though, it takes time to develop such a website. It also takes some resources to make it run. Don't you think a data-crunching algorithm would be better suited ?
Slashdot Mirror
Colleges should ban class lectures. They are one of the less efficient way of conveying information and knowledge. The fact that these survived the invention of the printing press amazes me but I am confident it won't survive the internet era.
A popular uprising needs to take strategic points in just a few days. It can't survive much longer. If you need a guerrilla campaign, that can include popular support but it is a completely different thing.
Actually they fared really badly until they got mukets that could pierce a knight's armour. Before that, send a few knights and they could disperse a lot of peasants. Mounted knights were the assault tanks of today. Their expensive and superior equipment is a force multiplier. 18th and 19th revolutions owe more to the cheap manufacture of powerful guns than to a sudden realization that tyranny is unbearable.
Because you cannot bring about Democracy by force. Either the people are ready for it or they are not, and the single best test of "are they ready" is that they overthrow the tyrant
Well I would like to believe in that myth, but I doubt that this is a universal rule and I think the ability to overthrow tyrants depends a lot more on the state of warfare technologies than on the willpower of the people. France, USA, had it easy to revolt at the era of the riffle. At this time, a riffle in a hand was worth another riffle in a hand. Numbers gave victory and thus, military victory was often democratic as well. Nowadays you can exterminate protestors with a few assault tanks. You have to have an organized rebel army if you want to overthrow a dictator's army. A rebel army is often very different from a popular uprising. The only recent success in popular uprising happened in situations where the government was strong but not harsh enough to cause tens of thousands of deaths in its own population.
We have to face it : the era of successful armed popular uprising was a specific time window that is now passed. It is now the role of outside democracies to help people fight their dictators. As "slippery slope" as it is and has proven to be, this is the only way left to overthrow dictators.
According to Henry Ford, the two most valuable assets of a company did not appear at the bottom line : it was a company's reputation and the employees that had the know-how. A loss of reputation can have a very direct impact on the bottom-line. Even a 100% egoistical company should think twice before leaving the popular "neutral-we-love-free-speech" costume.
He also state a form of oracle paradox to explain why the only science that the first foundation has no data about is psychohistory
That is the oracle paradox : there are many cases where you can't make a correct prediction that accounts for your prediction's effects.
That is exactly why in Asimov series there is the second foundation.
Actually France is showing the finest mix of incompetence and corruption in the latest internet/copyright laws.
The rationale is that computers make illegal copies on CDs and USB sticks so CDs and USB memory sticks must be taxed proportionally to their the space of storage they offer. Of course this is already silly and was created at the time where CDs were the most common movable storage devices. In order for it to not look too silly, it was made so that the tax would not target computers, as a 100 GB HD would make the tax ridiculously high. Then it was extended to devices that could be plugged to computers and provide storages. It sound sensible when applied to MP3 players, like the iPod, as their main use is actually to listen to music. Then came some devices with very high storage space, the design of a computer but the possibility to be seen as a USB storage.
This law was silly to begin with but now that it is a bit too blinding they will change it. Bah, it will have lasted a few years already and netted the music labels several millions.
Famous quote from 4chan
- I looked at this pic and I think a part of me died.
- It was a weak part. Now you are stronger.
Red flag linux ?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Flag_Linux
How lucky we are that capitalism is inherently resistant to it !
/sarcasm
I always wondered what the implications of password reuse were...
http://xkcd.com/792/
Ok, maybe not that bad
Again, don't be an ass.
Is this compatible with a technical discussion about law ?
By using systems they fully control ? They were using windows, which HAS backdoors that are acknowledged by microsoft to install security updates.
People will manage to sell something like "cyber-defense" when all that is needed, really, is to use the good tool for the good job...
It is also worth noticing the very high rate of prisoners per capita that even most dictatorship don't manage to top. I mean there are more prisoner in absolute (not per capita) in US than in China. That is saying a lot.
Internet killed the need for tech-related publications on dead-tree materials. Nuff' said.
It is a highly ineffective way to donate. And it only transmits very small sums IMHO. Wikileaks has about 5000 flattrs. Those translate to a few dollars maximum. This is not a viable donation means. I want to give 20 bucks or more to wikileaks. I have no way of doing that using flattr unless I create an account specially for flattr (and accept to give 10% to flattr)
My first thought at seeing the title of the article was "who is really surprised ?" I mean it is not like we have been talking about that for more than a decade...
You have a microphone linked to a radio-emitter with a behavior you can not verify and everybody wears one. If you told that to a citizen of a democracy in 1980, it would tell you it is a potential Orwellian world. I mean people who call that a "surprise" are clearly lacking any sort of insight.
I say let's put filtering ! Now the game will be to put porn on governmental websites, report them, and see what happens.
Actually DNS appearing to be the pressure point that censors will use to switch down website, I say it is interesting to be able to memorize a few or to write them down quickly.
I remember someone actually calculating the density of nanobots you would need per cubic meter in the whole atmosphere to fill the IPv6 address space. You can do it, but that day we will have some more serious concerns...
But you can use the open kinect driver and make a PC game that uses the kinect.
Apparently many people had the same idea. The tetalab (a French fablab) proposes a similar thing to tag all the subjects of the cables : http://leakspin.tetalab.org/
Do they really rely on that ? I know they check for coherent answers, but the training they give is so poor that I don't expect them to get any meaningful results. How much points ina spike for it to be significant ? Is it normal to see high frequency oscillations ? Should we try to spot spikes even when the data is very noisy ?
Also, the example they give is very obvious. I am sure I could easily write a software to do as well very quickly (find a significant deviation from average that appear locally on several points). I tried a few graphs, before my CS background convinced me that the aim of this website is more to attract attention than to really add scientific content. Seriously though, it takes time to develop such a website. It also takes some resources to make it run. Don't you think a data-crunching algorithm would be better suited ?